


so show me (and I’ll show you)

by plinys



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/F, Light Angst, Monster - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-13
Updated: 2019-04-13
Packaged: 2020-01-12 16:32:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18450392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plinys/pseuds/plinys
Summary: Starting over is supposed to be easier. That’s what all the self help books say.[or in which Zari discovers a monster under her bed]





	so show me (and I’ll show you)

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote the first half of this fic on a plane home from London, and the second half on a plane to Vegas, so any errors I blame on airplanes.
> 
> This is inspired by a cursed(tm) fic for another fandom but instead of sin I made it sad-ish I guess...
> 
> Technically counts for my bad things happen bingo card and the “Came Back Wrong” square.

 

It rains that first night in her new apartment.

Zari lays there in the darkness, listening to the distant sound of the storm outside, the water hitting down over the sidewalk, the sound of cars on the wet roads below.

A sound which to anyone else might have been comforting.

A sound which to the woman she had been months ago might have been comforting.

But now...

She grabs her phone off the nightstand, shoving a pair of headphones in, and pulling up a playlist. Music turned up too loud. Too loud to even consider sleeping, but something to drown it all of.

Just for a moment.

Because she remembers all too well the last time it rained...

  
  


*

 

Starting over is supposed to be easier.

That was what all of the self help books had said.

To look at what felt like a finality not as an ending, but as a new beginning, as a chance to start over. To rediscover herself in the wake of something so earth shattering. To not spend every night waking up suddenly with nightmares time and time again.

Zari forces a breath out of her lungs.

Forces herself to remember how to breathe, before climbing out of bed, taking her comforter with her as she goes.

She isn’t sure what her plan for the rest of the night is, not with an alarm clock blinking at her with the early hour of 2:34 am on its digital display. But she forces herself to wakefulness, with the plan to make a cup of tea like someone else used to make for her not too long, and put on a video game so complicated that she forget how to think.

Zari only makes it partway through coming up with her plan before she stops. Her sock covered foot coming in contact with something that hadn’t been on her floor before. She feels the crack of the glass under her foot, before her mind catches up to stop herself.

The light from her cell phone doesn’t do much to illuminate her room, but the fear of stepping on glass again has her hovering her foot in the air as the phone light shines down reflecting against the cracked picture frame.

The now distorted vision of the woman behind the screen.

Her face, one last smile caught before the sands of time, looks just a bit off caught in the glare and the cracked glass.

The tears when they come are sudden, but not unexpected.

Later, forcing herself to eat a bowl of far too sugary cereal, she searches for reports of earthquakes in her area the night before.

A logical explanation for the photo on her floor.

Only one frame having clattered down off her bedroom wall.

Only that frame.

Her search turns up empty, so she forgets about it, buys another frame from the dollar store down the street and tries to pretend that she doesn’t hurt a little as she transfers the picture over to a new frame.

 

*

 

The second time she wakes to the same framed photograph on her bedroom floor, she brushes it off as a coincidence.

But by the third time…

And the fourth…

Fifth.

Sixth.

Seve-

“I think my apartment might be haunted,” Zari says.

Nora nods solemnly at that, before laying down on Zari’s floor, with her literal demon cat on her chest.

Maybe it would have been a better idea John for his opinion, but last time she had asked John for advice his magic had ended up killing her extensive collection of houseplants and at least Nora weird quirks we well… Less.

Plus she got the added bonus of inviting Ray over, who is usually kind and understanding and brought gluten free cookies with him every time he came over.

She’s munching on one of those cookies awaiting the verdict from Nora, when Ray frowns looking around her new apartment, and finally says what she knows has been on his mind since the second they showed up, “Maybe you just miss her.”

Zari closes her eyes.

Of course she misses her.

They all miss her.

How could you not miss her?

“It’s not that,” Zari promises. “It’s different.”

Certainly, there had been a small part of her that had hoped - that still hopes - whatever is haunting her home is her. But she knows better than to cling to that hope. Better than to wish the fate of a restless spirit on her.

In the end it doesn’t matter, because Nora’s eyes fly open suddenly, red and glowing as opposed to her usual dim green, and Mallus scampers off of her chest in the direction of Zari’s bedroom, with Nora close behind.

Zari stuffs another cookie into her mouth before following the two of them.

When they reach her bedroom, but Nora and Mallus have somehow managed to wedge themselves under Zari’s bed. An impressive feat for Nora, not so much for the ‘cat’.

“Nora,” Ray’s voice comes from behind her. “Everything okay down there.”

The voice that comes out isn’t really Nora’s, but they’re all well used to it by now, so neither of them are really all that surprised, by the tone. It’s more her words.

“There’s a monster under your bed, Miss Tomaz.”

“I mean, you’re down there right now,” Zari says, crouching down to be level with the two sets of glowing red eyes under the bed.

A laugh, a more Nora sounding sound, and then, “No, not us. They won’t come out now, because it’s day time, but they were under here earlier.”

“A monster under my bed,” Zari repeats.

It seems silly that this is her hang up. As if one of her best friends is not literally dating a demon’s vessel, and one of the others is a Warlock. But for some reason the concept of having a monster under her bed makes her feel like a child all over again.

“Is that even a real thing,” Zari asks. “What am I twelve?”

Already knowing the answer.

Everything that goes bump in the night is apparently real, if you know how to pay attention to it.

Nora rolls out from under the bed at her question, assuming a crossed legged position to look up at Zari and Ray, Mallus following as he settles down in her lap a moment later. It takes just a second, Nora closes and opens her eyes, and suddenly she’s back to normal. The demon once again at home in her pet.

“There’s a portal to a hell prison under your bed,” Nora explains, more herself now, “Whatever comes to visit is mostly harmless. I think… Their energy feels mostly harmless. You should be fine.”

“Should be,” Zari repeats skeptically.

Nora shrugs. Not willing to elaborate, and turns to Ray, “Can we get ice cream now?”

And that’s the end of that.

  
  


*

  
  


Zari spends the rest of the day laying on her bed, watching as the sun filters in through her windows, until it starts to fade finally setting. She feels a little bit foolish, following on the recommendations of Nora, but once her room is plunged into darkness she tries speaking to the monster under her bed.

“Uh hi,” Zari says.

There’s no answer.

Not that she expected one.

She laughs a little at herself, at the absurdity of it all.

“Sorry if the place smells a bit like demon,” Zari continues. “John always complains that it smells whenever Nora brings her cat around, because her cat isn’t exactly a cat, but you know… Maybe you don’t know. Do they have demon cats in the hell prison that you’re in?”

No answer.

But suddenly Zari can’t stop talking.

“And what even is a hell prison? Does that mean you’re some criminal, should I be worried that I’m going to be murdered in my sleep, my soul harvested or whatever.”

A part of her.

The small part of her that has ached ever since…

Wouldn’t mind.

Might even welcome it.

“I was told that you’re mostly harmless and I’m choosing to believe that. I’m not sure how far you can go from my bedroom, but I’m going to go watch Netflix in the living room, I guess if you want to like wander around in here just stop knocking my pictures off the walls… I really can’t afford to keep buying new frames...”

Still no answer.

Zari sighs.

Pushing herself up off of her bed.

Why she had even gone along with this in the first place was beyond her.

She steps out of bed, fully intending to do exactly as she had set, settle in for a night of Netflix and probably fall asleep on the couch - the one free of monsters - when she is stopped.

It’s barely there.

The lightest touch against her ankle.

It’s too dark to see.

But she feels it a brush just there, something reaching out.

Not a word spoken, not any proof that this isn’t all her mind playing cruel tricks on her, but for a second it feels like an acknowledgement.

An okay spoken deep into her soul.

 

*

 

The next morning her picture frames are still in their places on her wall.

The smiling faces of her friends - of her - still staring back at Zari without cracks across them.

Okay, the touch against her ankle had said.

A small peace.

Everything in the room seems to be in order, save for her bedsheets, which she could have sworn had been made, maybe a little rumpled from where she had laid on top of them waiting for a reply from her monster.

They’re pushed to the bottom of the bed, all wound up in a ball, that Zari spends a good five minutes untangling.

Proof that she’s not alone.

That she’s not crazy.

And that apparently she really does have a monster under her bed.

 

*

  
  


It rains that evening.

A part of her thinks that it’s fitting, in some horrible twisted way.

At least, the darkness no longer feels so suffocating as she starts to cry.

 

*

  
  


She keeps talking to her monster.

Because what else is there to do but accept her new roommate.

There’s never a reply.

Not really, not in any way that it counts.

But something about it is comforting. Thank

Like that therapist that Ray keeps insisting she should try to talk to, cards for doctors, new treatments, the worried insistence that he knows the feeling and that this could help.

Like all the calls she’s made home, so often that she’s used to her mother’s gentle reminders that a flight to DC is more than possible.

Like standing in the pouring rain and letting all her regrets wash over her.

“At least, you’re not a demon cat,” Zari says.

She’s not sure if she could deal with that.

Not really sure how Ray and Nora do.

There’s a sort of noise. Not a laugh, not technically, more like the sound of something scraping against the floor. Vaguely threatening in a way. But also almost comforting. Her own personal nightmarish creature, agreeing with her that cats are cursed.

Zari makes her own small noise, not a laugh, a little too sad to be.

But close.

“Yeah, I don’t really like Mallus either.”

It’s almost like having a dairy.

A living one, she supposes.

Someone she can just talk to - something - that she can spill all her worries and troubles to without getting anything really in reply. But the confirmation that her words are not going unheard. The shadow of a feeling that brushes against her foot as she hangs her right leg off of the edge of her bed.

The touch of something monstrous.

She should be scared.

Any reasonable person would be.

But she can’t find it in herself to be.

It’s comforting.

Talking to her monster about everything there is to know in the universe.

Everything except her.

 

*

 

A bad day becomes the tipping point.

It’s raining because every single one of Zari’s bad days seem to involve the rain now.

It wasn’t supposed to have been like this.

Dinner with friends, but there was an open seat at the table and Nate had looked at her with those eyes that felt like an accusation.

It might not have been.

But it didn’t matter.

The thought was there and when Sara has ordered the group another round of drinks, Zari downed two of them without care for her lack of tolerance.

For all the reasons she shouldn’t.

She was soaked, having taken the train home and then walked back to her new apartment, refusing to get in a car in a storm like this.

And maybe it’s because she’s a little drunk.

Maybe because she’s a little hurt.

But the tears when they come burn at her eyes, and the words that spill from her lips are so angry. Not really directed at her nightly listener, but still there, still spoken-

“Fuck you,” Zari says, as she tugs off her wet clothing, “Fuck everything, why couldn’t you be fucking real.”

There’s no answer.

But the darkness doesn’t seem as comforting as usual.

The room a touch cold, but maybe that’s just the rain soaked layers she’s peeling off.

“I mean,” Zari pauses, tugging on her pajamas. “I know you’re real, but you’re not a person. Someone I could talk to or hug. I mean at least Nora gets a fucking cat, you can hug a cat, you can’t hug a fucking tentacle monster.”

Hurt.

She can feel it lingering in the air.

Not a comforting touch.

But a sub conscious feeling.

“I just…” Zari trails off, squeezing her eyes shut so the tears wouldn’t fall. “I just kept wishing that you were her, even as a ghost, at least then…”

Then what?

She wouldn’t wish that fate on anyone.

Even if it would make the hurt a little less.

“Nevermind.”

She forces herself into bed.

Forces herself to try and fall asleep.

But just before she slips into unconsciousness, she hears one word, spoken into her mind like a question - who?

 

*

 

It feels like a nightmare at first.

A dream where she’s stuck in place.

Watching all the worst moments of her life over and over again in slow motion.

Zari jolts up from bed, her heart beating too fast in her chest like it wants to escape.

There’s a figure sitting at the end of her bed, her desk chair rolled over so that she can observed.

And her first though is that the nightmare still isn’t over.

She tries to focus on the figure across from her. Eyes blurry in the darkness. Their skin is dark, pulling in the darkness rather than the moonlight. A spiraling out of shadows behind them, like tendrils of darkness behind them.

But as Zari blinks and the features slip into place.

She realizes at once that something is wrong.

A nightmare, surely this must still be one.

Zari squeezes her eyes shut upon putting the features together, refusing to look at her, as she tells herself. “This isn’t real.”

The reply she gets comes from a voice that seems to speak directly into her soul, a manner that is familiar, though the tone now caries a distinct British lit more similar to John’s than to hers.

“Afriad not, love.”

Zari snaps her eyes open. “Who are you?”

“I believe you’re fond of calling me your monster,” the figure says.

Shifting slightly, the moonlight catching on it’s features, and the expression there is so familiar that Zari feels like she might be sick. Those warm brown eyes that even in the darkness seem to see right through her just as they always have.

She wants to cry.

She wants to hit something.

She wants - “Why do you look like that?”

The monster shrugs.

Such a human move.

Such a familiar move.

“You asked me to,” it replies.

And oh…. Hadn’t she?

The night before.

Asked for something.

For anything.

For her.

“Change back,” Zari commands. “Change into something else.”

There’s a frown on those lips.

As if her monster is hurt.

The same frown that had been the last look Zari saw, angry words, that she never got to take back. The rain pouring down outside. Too much and too soon and not enough and...

Zari has always hated rainy days.

It’s raining now.

She had blamed the nightmare on that.

Now she wonders if there’s something more to it.

“It’s not that easy,” the monster explains. “I’m a shapeshifter, but once I take a shape for a person, I stay that way for them.”

Zari’s stomach turns again.

She can’t stay here.

Can’t look at that face that still haunts her.

So she gets up to leave the room, looking at the floor the whole time, “Maybe you should’ve stayed in your hell prison.”

  
  


*

 

Her monster doesn’t come back for a few days.

Zari tries to tell herself that that is a good thing.

That she doesn’t feel lonelier in her absence.

She throws a party, a movie night, invites over all her friends as a distraction. Ray brings Nora, and Sara brings Ava, and Mona and Gary roll up with far too much alcohol for only one of them being old enough to purchase it, and even Nate is there, sitting as far from Zari as possible and trying not to look uncomfortable.

It’s progress for them.

Or whatever passes for progress.

Nobody’s really paying attention to the movie, but Gary starts rambling some terrible porn anime he’s watched and this would be the time where Zari would normally chime in with one of her own while she would fondly ask a thousand questions and understand none of it.

But there’s silence for a minute until Zari asks the question that’s been lingering on her mind for a while, “What about a demon?”

Gary smiles, “You mean like an anime where they fuck demons, because I can name at least six-“

“Why don’t you just get Ray and Nora to leak a sex tape,” Sara asks, only half a joke, “If you want to see someone fuck a demon.”

“You really think Ray does the fucking in this relationship,” Nora replies with a eyeroll of her own.

Everyone bursts into laughter after that.

And it’s just like old times.

It feels right.

Zari spends the rest of the night feeling more like herself than she has in a while. Everything feels normal.

Like nothing ever went wrong.

Like that day in the rain wasn’t the worst thing that’s ever happened to her.

But then Mona excuses herself to use the bathroom and comes back with a frown on her face, and says, “It smells like sadness.”

And Zari knows she isn’t talking about the usual sadness.

That this one time it isn’t about her.

Still, she replies, in a voice that has long since accepted her fate, “I’m always sad nowadays.”

“No,” Mona shakes her head, “Not you.”

Nora nods small on the couch. “I wasn’t sure whether to mention it or not but…”

She didn’t need advice from the two magical creatures that she only sort of considered friends. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

They all pretend to go back to normal after that, to be happy and fun, but the moment is lost and when Zari finally ushers them all out the door. She finds all the plants on her window sill have wilted.

 

*

 

Zari invites John over.

Because when things inevitably go wrong in a magic fashion, John is always the one they call.

It takes him ten seconds, the second he crosses over the threshold into her apartment, for the frown to settle onto his face. “Oh god, what did you say to her?”

“I didn’t do anything,” Zari says defensively, “She’s the one that showed up looking like Am-“

“Maybe, you should try to explain that, love.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Pet,” John corrects win a shrug. “I need a drink before we can have this conversation.”

Hours later, a bottle of whiskey empty on her kitchen counter, the pea plant she used to keep suddenly looking less wilted away, and John finally gone - she still feels unsatisfied.

Maybe his advice wouldn’t be the worst thing ever.

 

*

 

She takes the photo from her wall.

The one that always seemed to fall.

Sits down on her bed, staring at the photo, and finally begins to talk.

“Her name was Amaya.”

It’s the first time she’s said her name in months.

The first time’s been able to think about her without wanting to cry.

“And I loved her.”

A truth.

The one truth she’s known since the movement they first met. Zari down on her luck, running, about to be caught ‘vandalizing’ a building again, because back then she had thought herself an artist. And Amaya had been there sitting passenger in Nate’s massive truck, offering her hand to a stranger, a place to hide, in the backseat, before even knowing her story.

“But she was with someone else, and that was fine,” Zari says. “I didn’t need to be with her. I just needed her to be safe until…”

Zari closes her eyes.

In an unsuccessful attempt to keep the tears at bay.

“We had fought, over something dumb, she was supposed to be getting married in a few months and I was jealous and I told myself I would be fine,” Zari’s voice shakes. “And I left, but it had been raining and I didn’t have an umbrella, and…”

And Amaya had got in that truck.

Grabbed the keys from the counter, and followed after her, insisting that one arguement wasn’t worth Zari getting sick from the rain.

(At least, that’s how Nate had told the story, bitter and hurt, as they stood looking down at the same headstone.)

“You look like her,” Zari says, because she can’t tell that part.

Can barely speak through the tightness in her chest.

“But you’re not her,” Zari says. “I know that now, no matter how much I had wanted you to be her… And that’s okay.”

She doesn’t expect an answer.

Doesn’t think she really deserves one.

But there’s a ghostly touch there.

A hint of a shadow, and one word spoken in her mind, Okay.

 

*

 

She’s there the next night, sitting in the desk chair, legs crossed under her as she if she had been watching Zari sleep for the last few hours.

She might have been.

They’ve got a few hours left until sunrise, and Zari tries to push back the ache of longing every time she looks as her and those all too familiar features.

Tries to move on.

As she’s been trying to for months.

So she starts, as she should have from the very beginning and asks, “What’s your name?”

“Charlie.”

It’s so normal.

So human.

That Zari can’t help the surprised expression from flirting across her face.

An expression that her monster - Charlie - catches, arching an eyebrow at her, in a look that is so different from about any expression Amaya ever wore.

“It’s just,” Zari laughs a little at her own awkwardness, “That’s an odd name for a monster.”

“Well, what’s yours?”

“Zari.”

And Charlie smiles, one with too many teeth, a smile more monster than human. Zari cannot help but find comfort in that. She’s not like Amaya at all.

No, she’s just Charlie.

Charlie who has shadowy tentacles spinning out from behind her, and far too many teeth. Charlie, who is a bit of a monster, but still feels like the greatest thing Zari’s ever found.

Charlie, who replies with a little laugh of her own, “That’s an odd name for a human.”

 

*

 

It rains the next morning.

A soft spring rain.

A rain that washes everything away: demons, past mistakes, blood.

A rain that for the first time doesn’t make Zari want to cry.

It feels like a new beginning.

And finally, after what feels like a lifetime, Zari remembers how to breathe.

  
  
  



End file.
